the evil within us

As I am preparing for my Social Development & Social Policy course, and I have to read the reports on most of the major social programmes being run by the Government of India today, I realize that there have been crores and crores of rupees that have been invested in development and social upliftment. If all of that money was really spent in earnest, then we would be riding very high in the world in development and social equality, but we are not.

On paper, there are some very big numbers that are spent on policies, but all of them fail the accountability and oversight test, and I think the amount of money pilfered and stolen is unfathomable.

Of course, I am merely repeating what everybody knows already, but it leads me to question our own abilities as a nation. Are we capable of ruling ourselves, or have simply given up on trying to manage a country this big, and people these many?

We are taught in History that Gandhi ji said that India lives in its villages, yet the great governments of this country have still been unable to reach all the villages of this country. When this world is moving ahead on technology and breakthroughs, our brothers in many corners of the country still do not have electricity in their homes!

There are so many schemes for rural upliftment, including building all-weather roads, building up other infrastructure, and the UPeeA government's flagship program, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. Yet there is lethargy, unwillingness at all levels to actually put hard work in it.

I think the one thing that hurt me the most today was reading about the Mid-day Meal Scheme, now a national scheme, but with stark regional inequalities in its performance and implementation. These are the times when I question our ability to exist as a nation, and the ability of this society to take itself forward. If we can steal from the very food of our children, do we really deserve to succeed as a society?

The food meant for the poorest children is actually stolen by the very teachers who are supposed to teach them. Whistleblowers are tuamatized and harrassed, and it seems everybody is complicit in this thievery. Of course, the pathetic state of this country's education system could be a very reason for its downfall in the new economy, but can we blame the education system for the filth in our hearts, that prompts us to steal the food of our children? I really can't see any justification for it, even if our teaching class is one of the lowest paid in the world.

Somehow as we have moved across the centuries, our society seems to have turned into brutes, selfish, feelingless brutes. The most important people who affect our lives are the ones we give the least importance to. The people who have absolutely no bearing in our lives are the ones who we worship.

It remains to be seen if physical infrastructure will change the way the country looks, but what to do of the dirt in this society that shows no signs of going away?